As you may remember, MMI partnered with Global Minimum (GMin), a bednet distribution student group, this past spring. Here is a long overdue update on that partnership.
This summer, a group of GMin members travelled to Sierra Leone to distribute insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) raised through GMin and MMI. Global Health Forum’s Lois Park was also in Sierra Leone this summer, implementing a malnutrition program, which you can read about on her blog. During her trip, Lois visited the GMin team and sent us her impressions of the distribution…
August 1, 2009:
So about three weeks ago I visited the GMin team down in Sahn. It was about a 9-hour long ride from where I’m based on a poda poda (public transport) on the verge of breakdown, up and down bumpy roads (which remind you of the jerking on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland…). It was a good ride - the view from anywhere in Sierra Leone
is breathtaking. It was also exciting because it was the first time I traveled long distances in Salone alone on public transportation.
I joined them for a full day of net distribution. Okay, so I think these guys have a little too much energy or are just very motivated. They don’t have a car (well, not that it would be completely useful because some of the areas where they do the distribution are not ”motor-able”) and the one “honda” - or motorbike that they have is used to transport the bails of nets. So what they do is walk… through the jungle and through the woods (and three pools of water) to the villages. On the day I joined them it was 4.5 miles there and 4.5 miles back. It was good exercise to say the least. Each guy on the team (on a team of 10-ish people) will have walked over 100 miles in two weeks’ time for the distribution. They’re probably walking more right now for follow-up…
I took some 400+ pics while I was with them for 2-ish days. I wasn’t able to do much video because I was busy taking pictures - but the Gmin team has a media person whose been getting tons of video footage - so no worries. And what I saw, I thought was great. When they arrive at the village the chief calls a town meeting to introduce the team to the villagers then they do a skit showing why they should use bednets then the team splits up into groups to go house to house in the village to do the net distribution. When a team goes to a house, they do a simple survey, do a walk around the house to identify how many sleeping spaces (beds and grass mats) there are and give the family enough nets to cover all sleeping spaces.
They rip the net out of its packaging (to discourage selling the nets) and hang them out on the front porch (you’re supposed to air out the nets for a few hours because if you use the net right away, you’ll have an uncomfortable tingling sensation in the morning because of the insecticide). The best part is when after the distribution the villagers come with a few chicken or a goat, thanking the team for what they’re doing. We had rice andsauce with chicken for dinner that day. Yum.
This post was written by camilia.kamoun
[...] Students participating in Minus Malaria Week will do this in three ways: education, fundraising, and advocacy. Student organizations in support of the Minus Malaria Initiative (MMI) will host both an educational campaign and a fundraising campaign on their college campus. Through their campaigns, organizations will work to raise awareness about malaria in their communities and to advocate for malaria relief by participating in the Give a Net, Get a Vote campaign: for every $5 donated (the equivalent of one net), supporters of MMI will have the opportunity to sign a letter to Congress, expressing support for legislation that furthers the goals of MMI. All funds raised will be used to purchase bednets to be distributed in Malen chiefdom in Sierra Leone, a community where MMI has previously focused its efforts. [...]